Gerard K. O'Neill

Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth...

Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (6 February1927 – 27 April1992) was a U.S. physicist and advocate of space colonization. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated from Swarthmore College in 1950 and received a doctorate in physics from Cornell University in 1954. In the same year he joined the faculty of Princeton University, with which he remained associated until his death. O'Neill's early research focused on high-energy particle physics; he notably invented the particle storage ring.

Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth: to bring the poverty-stricken segments of the world up to a decent living standard, without recourse to war or punitive action against those already in material comfort; to provide for a maturing civilization the basic energy vital to its survival.

The High Frontier (1976)

Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?

We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely. Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable — the best site is "somewhere else entirely."